Are U.S. News undergraduate rankings at risk with the exodus of law schools?



In 2007, a collective of liberal arts colleges known as the Annapolis Group convened in Maryland’s capital and decided to take a jab at one of the more powerful forces in admissions: U.S. News & World Report’s yearly rankings.To get more news about undergraduate, you can visit wikifx.com official website.

The colleges’ presidents said they would no longer participate in the list. Given higher education’s follow-the-leader tendency, they hoped other institutions would abandon the rankings, which are often criticized for relying on flawed methodology and hurting equity efforts.An exodus never materialized. But 15 years later, observers see cracks in the foundation of U.S. News’ system due to bombshell announcements last month that several high-profile law schools — including those at Yale, Harvard and Columbia universities — would no longer send the publication the data it uses to construct the rankings.

Not since the Annapolis Group’s plan has there been such a deliberate, college-led strike against rankings, said Colin Diver. At the time of the gathering, Diver was president of one of the liberal arts institutions, but one that had sworn off the rankings long before — Reed College, in Oregon.

The law schools’ abandonment has raised a question: Will a similar campaign emerge against U.S. News’ bread-and-butter product — the Best Colleges undergraduate rankings?Experts view the law schools’ decisions not as an immediate death sentence for the rankings, but rather a part of incremental change, like potentially empowering colleges to force U.S. News to rework metrics they find most objectionable.

Others feel society prizes rankings in general so much that they could never be dislodged from the higher ed landscape. Consumers appreciate easy lists — something that tells them the right skin product or phone to purchase.

Rankings are one thing for comparable products that cost $15 or $50, or even for more expensive goods that can later be sold like cars. But colleges’ varying missions and value propositions cannot be summed up as easily as which toaster to buy.U.S. News & World Report published its first college rankings in 1983, carving out a new niche. The public up to that point paid little attention to early iterations of such listings — those were primarily circulated within higher ed institutions and associations.

Five years later, U.S. News started releasing its rankings annually, and criticism around them swelled.

Colleges did not appreciate the publication centering its methodology around such variables as a reputational survey, which today accounts for 20% of the formula. In the surveys, administrators rate each others’ colleges but often have little understanding of the intricacies of their peer institutions.

Colleges can game metrics, too. U.S. News factors in enrollees’ SAT and ACT scores, and in 2008, Baylor University reportedly dangled financial incentives for first-year students to retake the tests and potentially bolster its rankings placement. Baylor soon ended the practice.

U.S. News still backs its methodology, though. Madeline Smanik, a U.S. News spokesperson, said in an email that the publication analyzes data from surveys and “reliable third-party sources” and expects high-level officials to attest to data colleges submit directly.

“The methodology is continuously refined based on user feedback, discussions with schools and higher education experts, literature reviews, trends in its own data, availability of new data, and engaging with deans and institutional researchers at higher education conferences,” Smanik said.